Our initial poking around determined that we had, in fact, found the cheapest residence-hotel. In fact it cost triple to get one in the center or even off in the boondocks in an area called cité-international. This area we had visited when we went to an American club meeting. It's a whole bunch of shiny Hilton's and antiseptic shops I guess designed to look like anything BUT France. So, triple the price, far from everything, and not at all French... I think we'll pass! Our place is really cute. We might have ended up staying in our 35 m^2 place forever, but after the internet failed to work reliably for 3 months and then the elevator stopped working (we were on the 7'th floor) we got a little more motivated to look for someplace else.
Since I'm what my family calls "work impaired," meaning I have this pesky thing called a job that takes up my day, Monica had to do most of the work at first. She started with English sites and American owners. We found 2 places that were tantalizing - huge (3 bedrooms), located in fashionable neighborhoods, furnished, and cheaper than our current place. But things didn't work out with either one and we realized we were going to be forced to use French systems and make French phone calls.
Our first attempt was French websites. The ads were basically lifted from print including many mysterious abbreviations. I wrote a form letter email and we sent it out to tons of people. Monica called me at work the next day to see if our week was now filled with appointments to see apartments. "What do you mean?" I responded, "NOBODY has replied." We're not in Silicon Valley anymore it seems. Slowly we got responses from people with the weirdest requests like they wanted to rent their place for April, June-October, and December. Huh? We're supposed to move out in between? Soon I had notes on around 100 places which I would update as we got an occasional email or phone call or sometimes even a chance to visit. A lot of places listed a month's rent as "Hono." Eloïse at the office told me that is the agent fee, so we should avoid those. Well that was most of them! We called one woman who had several nice listings, 2 of which were definite possibilities and she had no Hono, just $200 FA (whatever that is).
We arrived at her office with our list and asked if we could see the 3 places we had circled. First, she had us fill out a form which was basically a paper version of our search criteria. We had listed 2 neighborhoods and a price range and sure enough after she had entered the data and printed the search results our places were there. So, can we go SEE one of them now? Nope, we have to pay the $200 fee before we can even look! What!? "Yes, all these other listings have the same thing, and my fee is the lowest." She was right, but we both get that "I am about to become a sucker" feeling. Well, we haven't had much luck on our own and if this works out we'll be happy and the other fees are indeed higher... So, although it's probably a mistake we pay. OK, she prints our list again - this time with names and phone numbers. She suggests we call our #3 choice first as he speaks some English (she does not). He's a nice old man and asks how long we are staying. He's fine with us leaving at year's end, in fact, he has another apartment we might like too. Hello? Why don't these people advertise? We're supposed to find these by word of mouth or something? Ok, we can come by tonight. After hanging up, our helpful agent crosses off our #1 and #2 choices - What?! Noooo! "Oh, this woman only wants tenants for longer than 1 year." Gee, I wish we'd known that before we paid our money! Her service now complete we are free to go and use our code on the website to access our list in the future. Just call the owners directly. Buh bye! Gee, what great service! Think it couldn't get worse? Later I went to the site to browse for more listings and to see what they have in the 6'th district. I click on search and there is the list we already have, but to change our search fields we have to "contact your local agent during business hours." That's ridiculous, but I call her the next day and ask if she can just add the 6'th and raise our top price a little. No, she can't do it on the phone. I have to fax her my request. Groan! "But be sure this is what you want because you can only change 3 times." Oh my god! I am going to be so glad to see these old fashioned companies put out of business by the web! When I told my dad and stepmom this story, they just smiled as sympathetic victims (they too lived in France for a while) "That is just so typically French!"
A friend in Monica's French class paid over $800 to an agency to find an apartment and they haven't had any luck (or maybe they haven't tried very hard?). Maybe we were lucky to escape with only $200 lost.
We had just about given up hope of finding a good place - we had lots of OK places - when our luck had a sudden reversal... I'll cover that next time. Included in this blog are pictures of our first place. It has a kitchen/living area and bathroom downstairs with a sofabed and upstairs is our bedroom and office area with a little balcony outside. Monica was so proud that we managed to fit our entire lives into this little place.
In the meantime, here's a picture of an outdoor cafe by us
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